I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Nasir Khan: The Arab rulers
have American and Israeli rulers as their guardians and protectors. In
return they do what US and Israel tell them to do. But any occasional
word of sympathy by the Arab rulers for the people of Gaza who are being
slaughtered mercilessly by Israel are only a public relations stunt
meant to deceive domestic and Muslim audiences and a cover-up about
their real masters and partners. To expect them to arm the Palestinians
against a barbaric Zionist war-machine seems unrealistic. That’s the
truth in a nutshell.

During his Eid al-Fitr address July 29, Iran’s Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spent a considerable portion of his speech
discussing the war in Gaza. He condemned Israel and called the attacks
on Gaza “genocide.”

In response to calls by Western nations to disarm Hamas, Ayatollah Khamenei said, “What do you mean, disarm?
They have a few missiles to briefly defend themselves against the
enemy.” He said the West wants to disarm Hamas so that “Whenever the
Zionists want they can attack, light any fire, and [Gazans] would not
even be allowed to defend themselves.”

He continued, “The president of America issued a fatwa that the
resistance must be disarmed. Yes, it’s clear, you want this [minimal]
attack in response to all of these crimes not to happen. We say the
opposite. All of the world, especially the Islamic world, has a
responsibility: whatever it can do to equip the Palestinian people.

Monday, July 28, 2014

I don’t know how to offer my Eid greetings to the millions of people
who are hungry, homeless and are victims of wars, violence, oppression
and discrimination.

At this time, Israeli war on Gaza is in the
third week. Israeli propaganda and American military, political and
diplomatic support for Israel have been instrumental in presenting a totally
distorted picture of the Palestine-Israel conflict. By using deceptive
tactics and disinformation, they have succeeded in isolating the
Palestinians and misleading the world public opinion about the reality
of the Israeli occupation and expansion in the occupied territories.

As a
result, the victims are still being portrayed by the western imperial
governments and the right-wing mainstream media as the aggressors who
are threatening the security of Israel! So the powerful aggressor and
occupier has become a victim while the powerless, dispossessed and
marginalised Palestinian victim has become a threat to the ‘security’ of
Israel!

1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza, who have been under the brutal
Israeli blockade for the last seven years, are again being killed
indiscriminately by Israeli aerial bombardment, ground forces and naval
gunships. Once again, Israel has calculatedly been busy destroying and
pulverising their houses, smashing the infrastructure and public
utilities in the besieged enclave. Israeli armed forces with their
overwhelmingly superior military force and advanced weapons are reducing
Gaza to rubble from which it may not recover in the years to come. If
the Israeli occupation and blockade will continue as now then any
chances of rebuilding Gaza are zero.

Monday, July 21, 2014

[Prefatory Note: "Palestine’s Dilemma: To Go or Not to Go to
the International Criminal Court" was published on July 13, 2014 on the
website of Middle East Eye, a site I strong recommend to all those with
an interest in Middle East issues; this post represents a somewhat
revised text, but within the framework of the original; the political
plausibility of invoking the Inteernational Criminal Court to
investigate allegations of criminality directed at Israel increases with
each passing day.]

Ever since this latest Israeli major military operation against Gaza
started on July 8, there have been frequent suggestions that Israel is
guilty of war crimes, and that Palestine should do its best to activate
the International Criminal Court (ICC) on its behalf. The evidence
overwhelmingly supports basic Palestinian allegations—Israel is guilty
either of aggression in violation of the UN Charter or is in flagrant
violation of its obligations as the Occupying Power under the Geneva
Convention to protect the civilian population of an Occupied People;
Israel seems guilty of using excessive and disproportionate force
against a defenseless society in the Gaza Strip; and Israel, among an
array of other offenses, seems guilty of committing Crimes Against
Humanity in the form of imposing an apartheid regime in the West Bank
and through the transfer of population to an occupied territory as it
has proceeded with its massive settlement project.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

There are many people who are just repeating the deceptive and
misleading Zionist propaganda that has been the stock-in-trade of the
Israeli rulers against Hamas that it wants the destruction of Israel?

In
reality, Hamas is not the threat; it is Israel that has been a constant
threat and aggressor since 1948. Hamas
is a freedom-seeking organisation. It stands for the end of the Zionist
occupation that has lasted for so long but sees no end of it in sight.
It asks for an end to further Israeli expansion in the occupied land.

Just take a look at the map of the West Bank and see what has happened
there since 1967. Practically hundreds of illegal settlements have been
established and extreme fanatic settlers put in there who constantly
terrorise the Palestinians still living there.

Now Israel has started a
new war, a new slaughter in the Gaza Strip with a view to destroy any
resistance to its occupation by Hamas. It is Israel that is destroying
all those who challenge its occupation.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

There are many people who think that Israel has invaded Gaza in
response to the rockets from Gaza. But there is more to this scenario
then many casual readers know. Therefore I present a brief account of
what happened. After the killing of three young ultra-rightist Jewish
settlers by some unknown people and the burning alive of a Palestinian
youth by the Zionists, the Netanyahu government accused Hamas of the
killings. This Hamas categorically denied and declared that such
accusations were totally unfounded. Hamas had nothing to do with the
killings; it also condemned such killings because it was apprehensive
that the Israeli government would use it an excuse to unleash terror in
the West Bank and also Gaza. That’s exactly what happened.

Israeli police and army started a large-scale crack down on all
members and sympathisers of Hamas in the West Bank. They also killed
many Palestinians during these operations. As a reaction to the
victimisation of its members by Israel, some resistance-fighters from
Gaza fired rockets into Israel without causing much damage or death.
There is no credible evidence that one Israeli citizen was killed by the
rocket fire. As expected by many political observers Israel used firing
of rockets from Gaza as a casus belli for a full scale aerial
bombardment indiscriminately that was followed by a ground invasion. But
what are the real reasons for Israeli war on Gaza? One prime reason is
to strike at the Palestinian unity government that the two factions
Fatah and Hamas had formed after the collapse of the US charade of peace
talks between the parties.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Editor’s remarks: The
army of Israeli war-mafia has killed more than 200 Palestinians,
injured thousands and has methodically destroyed and is destroying the
houses and infrastructure of Gaza mercilessly. In return, the
Palestinian resistence has managed to inflict one casualty on an Israeli
citizen. As far as I am concerned I am deeply unhappy over the ongoing
situation and also deeply sad over the loss
of life of any human being whether Palestinian or Israeli. But the
political, economic strangulation and siege of Gaza and the occupation
of the West Bank must end. Israel should stop its war of aggression on
Gaza and stop its brutal oppresion of the people of Palestine. Merely
because Israel has the support of the United States for whatever it does
against the Palestinians and in the Middle East is not a justification
to kill and destroy a captive people. This is total madness.

Israel is hitting Palestinian civilians, and it is hitting them hard.
To even speak of a ‘war’ risks confusion. This is not a clash or a
conflict, a tit-for-tat cycle or tribal tussle. This is an anti-colonial
revolt.

Israel is at war with the Palestinian people. More accurately, Israel
is writing a new, brutal chapter in its ongoing war against the
Palestinian people, a horror story stretching back decades, and,
appallingly, with more pages to be written.

As of now, the Israeli military has killed 100 Palestinians, and wounded an estimated 680, figures that continue to rise. OCHA,
a UN body, reported at 15:00 local time Thursday that 58 civilians were
among the dead, including 11 women and 21 children. The headline in
today’s Daily Telegraph: ‘Half of Gaza’s dead ‘are women and children”. OCHA also recorded 70 destroyed homes, with 342 housing units destroyed or severely damaged overall.

On Thursday, an unnamed IDF official told
Israeli media that strikes on the Gaza Strip were being conducted at a
rate of one attack every four and a half minutes. The source also
claimed that when “Gaza residents see the great damage to the Strip”, it
“will speak for itself”. Collective punishment then, wrapped and
packaged as ‘self-defence’.

Monday, July 14, 2014

There have been many times when oppressed people resisting their
oppressors gain international solidarity for their cause as public
opinion sways in their favour. They embody bravery as they continue to
resist against their enemies. We saw this pattern manifest itself in
Vietnam when the people struggled against the biggest superpower in the
world. The Vietnamese demonstrated how they turned to each other for
support when the northern city of Hanoi stood as a beacon of light for
its counterpart Saigon in the south. Soon after, the southern Vietnamese
people embodied the spirit of resistance and achieved all of their
goals.When it comes to the Palestinian case, the situation is entirely
different, for in the Gaza Strip (Southern Palestine) we see true armed
resistance being engaged in the battle against the Zionist enemy, which
is armed with the most sophisticated weapons and is using all of its
power and influence throughout the world to frame this conflict as it
sees fit; it is from this that the Palestinian people in Gaza can find
no escape. Gaza is burning and its natural supporters, the Arabs of the
region, sit and watch. The Palestinian Authority under the leadership of
Mahmoud Abbas, based in the West Bank city of Ramallah (which we can
consider here to be the northern region of Palestine), should be the
biggest advocate for its people in Gaza. And yet, all we here are
murmurs and useless statements being made here and there.Continues >>

Thursday, July 03, 2014

A one-sided response to the killings of three Israeli settlers ignores the Palestinians’ ongoing oppression, says JEREMY CORBYN MP

“NOTHING can justify these
abductions and murders, which we again condemn. Those responsible must
be brought to justice … but justice will not be served by Israel seeking
revenge by imposing collective punishment, or committing other
violations of Palestinians’ rights.”

Thus said Philip Luther of Amnesty
International in response to the murder of three Israeli settlers in
Palestine. However, retribution is very much the order of the day, as
has been widely reported around the world.

Palestinian residents in Shuafat, an Arab suburb of
Jerusalem, told Reuters they had seen a teenager forced into a vehicle
outside a supermarket on Tuesday night. They identified him as
16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudir.

A few hours later his body, partly burned and bearing
marks of violence was found abandoned on the outskirts of the city. In
response to this, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on all sides
not to take the law into their own hands.

A strange choice of words as TV screens all around the
globe showed the bombing and burning of Gaza in Israeli air strikes
supposedly targeting Hamas positions, despite having no evidence that
Hamas had been involved in the abduction of the teenagers..

Netanyahu calls for respect for the rule of law while his
government indulges in collective punishment and has been condemned as
such in respect of the Geneva Conventions for past incursions and
bombings in Gaza.